


Not Anyone's Martyr

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long before the war, when working in deep space exploration, Blast Off found himself unwillingly involved in Cybertronian politics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Anyone's Martyr

They’d sold him out. Blast Off knew it before he hit atmosphere.

A new planet, a new threat. It was always the troublemakers sent to investigate, always the mechs whose failure to come home could never be counted as a loss.

It was stupid, really. The Institute didn’t understand how valuable he was. He was the best of his build type, and his build type was the best of the deep space exploration models.

He’d never made much of it; eight hundred vorns spent seeking the quiet life, watching opportunity after opportunity for fame and fortune pass him by.

He’d watched the Academy grow and flourish, watched the Institute for Advanced Xenological Research spring up from a small group of inquisitive minds. He’d tagged along because of caste associations, because he – like them – had been built for the towers. Because the study of alien life meant considerable interstellar travel. It was the allure of an environment without other mechs; time away from Cybertron in the dramatic intensity of space, alone with his thoughts for longer than most of the aliens he went to study would live.

He spent so little time on Cybertron that the politics behind his mission objectives completely passed him by.

But, in the moment before he hit atmosphere on this lonely little planet in the heart of quadrant 56.904, everything came together with a sudden and stunning clarity.

They’d told him the planet was unoccupied – devoid of sentient life. His brief had been to scan for resources, to catalogue any flora and fauna not detectable in spectroscopy from the Institute’s orbital and remote telescopes, and to collect soil samples.

That last point had puzzled him. Cybertronians weren’t interested in soil, not even if it supported life. Ores and crystals, it went without saying. But soil?

It felt like an excuse.

It was.

The planet wasn’t empty; the planet was occupied. What’s more, the life forms were sentient and technologically advanced.

As he approached the atmosphere, he caught sight of indicators that his scanners had failed to reveal. A crust of habitation on the pocked surface of the largest moon; a ring of satellites – metallic and artificial – in geostationary orbit at the equator; a flickering haze of some material he couldn’t identify rising up and around him, glittering and prismatic. Then he was through, passing into the upper layer of the atmosphere, and his sensors screamed with the intensity of new input.

Overwhelmed, he cancelled analysis of the new data. He focused instead on atmospheric entry, and the contemplation of that haze of ionised particles which somehow absorbed or deflected all signals coming from the planet itself.

Yes, they’d sold him out, the Institute’s fundraisers, the weak-cored aft-kissers and politicised warmongers. This place was rich with energy, technology, ripe for plunder. It’s dominant life form was a threat, and all the more so for being hidden from Cybertronian eyes.

Someone hailed him, an alien transmission in a code he couldn’t begin to understand. Still, he knew what it would say: ‘Turn back, or we will fire.’

Such a waste, he thought. Playing right into the Institute’s hands, giving Iacon yet another justification for its expansionist off-world policies. All the aliens had to do was fire one shot. Even if it didn’t hit him, the senate could vote to retaliate. All the better for Cybertron if it did hit him, if it killed him. He would be the Institute’s martyr.

He altered his trajectory, scanning for the source of the transmissions. Diverting power to his lasers, he had a moment to regret that the Cybertronian right to bear arms only allowed him civilian grade weapons. But the regret soon evaporated in the slow burn of his anger.

He wasn’t about to be anyone’s martyr.


End file.
